The BCS Machine Intelligence Prize is awarded for a live demonstration of
'Progress Towards Machine Intelligence'.

Soccer takes the Prize but Machine Intelligence is the Winner

The annual conference of the BCS Specialist Group on Artificial
Intelligence hosts the BCS Machine Intelligence Competition. The
competition is definitely not a group of researchers reading out
academic papers, it is a step into a world of risk for most competitors.
In the words of Rick Magaldi from British Airways, the competition is an
opportunity for system developers to fling themselves into the unknown
in front of an audience of critical and knowledgeable observers to see
if their systems can fly, figuratively speaking.

Each competitor offers a live demonstration of a system that is judged
by how much progress it represents to the development of Machine
Intelligence. The audience don't know about the technology or the
theory, they judge the entry on what it actually does during the
demonstration.

This year, four excellent demonstrations produced a close run
competition, but the winner, with a late goal, was a system presented by
Martin Rhodes and Simon Coupland from De Montfort University, that uses
evolutionary algorithms to work out which of thousands of options is the
best way to take a free kick. The 15 minute demonstration consisted of
several examples, each based on an actual free kick. The demonstrators
first showed a real free kick from a recent soccer game and then set
their system to work on the same problem faced by the kicker. A screen
display showed the system testing out many ideas before suggesting the
ones that were, it thought, most likely to result in a goal. In some
cases, the system derived the same kick as the one actually used by the
kicker before suggesting alternative options. In other cases the system
disagreed with the kicker and suggested a different option from the one
used.

Whilst the human soccer player probably drew on years of experience and
practice to work out the best kick; the computer system had to rely on
the physics of ball spin and momentum and a range of other variables to
produce a winning kick. One of the kicks tested by the system was a goal
scored by David Beckham. Maybe his secret was to use a similar system to
learn from, or maybe not.

Other entries were equally impressive. Hemin Omer Latif demonstrated
GazeBot, a mobile robot from Nottingham Trent University. This robot
managed to locate and track a person on stage and proceeded to follow
him wherever he went. The robot followed him out of the lecture theatre
and along the corridor. The audience could watch progress on a large
screen display, through the eye of the robot. This was all done with a
single vision sensor and no other measurements were taken.

Chris Huyck from Middlesex University presented an intelligent agent (CABot2) in
a simulated game environment that used `fatiguing Leaky Integrate and
Fire' neurons to interpret natural language commands to move about and
perform actions in the simulated environment. Finally, David Burden from
Daden Limited, demonstrated an avatar called `Halo' that lives in the
popular Second Life virtual world. Halo looks just like any other avatar
in that environment, all of which seem to be controlled by a human being
living somewhere, anywhere, in the world. But not Halo. She is an avatar
that is completely machine driven. Other avatars (people) can meet Halo
and talk to her just as they would to any other avatar. But would they
know that they were, on this occasion, actually talking to a machine?
Will machines first take over virtual worlds before turning their
attention to our world?

The competition in 2008 was extremely competitive and fascinating to
view. It was also highly challenging for each of the competitors. These
four competitors were initially selected from a much larger list of
entries. Some very good systems were not selected for the final
competition, not because they were not good enough, but typically
because they may not be so easy to demonstrate effectively in a live
situation to an audience that would vote on what the system did and not
what it was made of.

The challenge is there. Can anyone do better? Is anyone else prepared to
risk their reputations on a 15 minute demonstration of `so called'
Machine Intelligence? Everyone will get another opportunity in 2009, at
the next Machine Intelligence Competition to be held at AI-2009 in
Peterhouse College, Cambridge next December.

The Competition is intended to stimulate work on Machine Intelligence in
the United Kingdom. Each year, it seems to be doing a better job. Let's
hope that more researchers continue to bravely demonstrate their
systems. Maybe Industry in the UK can be encouraged to play a bigger
role and really show what they can achieve. More information about the
competition can be found at http://www.bcs-sgai.org/micomp/ and
the organisation that hosts the conference at http://www.bcs-sgai.org/.

(Photo 1) Simon explains in general how the real world free kicks are set up in
the Machine Intelligence system. He then watches in anticipation to see
if their system actually comes up with a winning kick, whilst being
watched by the knowledgeable audience of conference delegates. Martin,
out of shot (so to speak) does the setting up and then launches the
application.

(Photo 2) Professor Max Bramer, Chairman of the BCS Specialist Group on Artificial
Intelligence (SGAI), presents the winners Simon Coupland and Martin
Rhodes (left to right) with the prize. The winners also received a check
for £1000 from the SGAI. Martin is to continue his success with further
research into the uses of Machine Intelligence in the Sports Arena.